We’ve read how mysteriously people who come into contact with Donald J. Trump leave his presence somehow diminished, dirtier than they were, rougher, more silent, more fearful. Everyone to whom he extends his hand, and who takes it, is weakened, lessened, sullied by his oh-so-well-practiced grip.

Sometimes he needn’t even speak for this transfiguration to occur.

But Saturday last, the 12th of August,2017, Trump reached what – God, we hope! – even for him is the bottom rung.

Charlottesville, Virginia, a bucolic, quiet, heretofore peaceful college town of intellect and beauty may as well have become Caracas. Under the guise of protesting the removal of a statue commemorating a Civil War general, the alt-right (read that as you will…not everyone in that camp is a bonafied Nazi) demonstrated to us all that the lid is off, that people are no longer interested in being or even seeming to be civilized politically.

Taking their cue from our Dear Leader, the right has rallied to words, images, actions that earlier might have been tamped down for the sake of a well-functioning democracy. For hundreds of years a beat has been pulsing below what at surface seems well-meaning if unacknowledged prejudice. Our Dear Leader has lifted the lid. Not necessarily because he believes in divisive statements, but to make certain those people who voted for him feel free do to do so again, only the second time without shame.

Many believe Trump is a wizard politically, sensing trends of sentiment, political bubbles, violent niches of yesteryear.

We believe he is a coward.

This was the Dear Leader’s official response to events in Virginia: “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this display of egregious violence on many sides. It’s been going on for a long time in our country, it’s not Donald Trump, it’s not Barack Obama.”

What it also isn’t is families and individuals who feel committed to civil rights of all kinds.

Having – as usual – found someone else to blame for the event, Dear Leader is incapable of calling out those behind the violence either by philosophy or by name, both of which were and are available.

The phrase above – “on many sides” – is designed to signal to his followers that he sees them, loves them, needs them. And he does. It is also a death-knell for the less violent demonstrators, in this particular case the “counter”-demonstrators, who over the past few months have grown accustomed to protesting peaceably what to them seem indications of fascism on the march.

What “on many sides” also signals is that people of good will are no longer safe, secure in their beliefs of the Constitutional rights to meet, march, protest. Dear Leader doesn’t know much about the Constitution but for its few stipulations that keep him from becoming in reality what in fantasy he already is: KING.

The inability to call a spade a spade –not a racist term, please – simply shows us all what we got in the poke last autumn: a wildly uneducated man who’s been given a pass for seventy years because he shouts louder, pushes harder, has some loot, and a memory for insult that is second to none. That he wanted to be KING we didn’t know for a long time. That the nation, or a fairly hefty slice thereof, would allow this we also didn’t know.

If the man on the street who is not a Trumpie now feels uneasy, one of the reasons is that he and his family no longer have the confidence of their convictions – because the KING has united with bad king John’s barons and in invisible ink drawn up a series of royal proclamations that make fascism suddenly an approvable pastime. These barely hidden statements also militate against aliens of all kinds, against civil rights, against voting rights, and worst of all for the nation the ability of a family of four to walk safely carrying signs to express their own sentiments about how life in these United States is to be lived.

All of this from a man who knows only one thing: he wants to be loved for himself (hah!). If that can’t happen, he is not shy about pointing out his enemies internationally, but within the borders of the US he is timid because he needs approval so badly. He’ll take approval from any and all sources, and in so doing makes those sources anathema to Americans who remember what our country was before his ascension.

The citizen who disagrees has fewer and fewer shelters. The Senate and the House are both chicken hearted or, if you will, focused so tightly on keeping their own sources of income and insurance they have no time left for the people who put them into those chairs. While redoubts of opposition exist state-by-state, or city-by-city, is wonderful, but when push comes to shove – or when funding ceases – they’re not in much better position than anyone else. Up against a Dear Leader whose most reasonable battle plan is to deprive someone of his/her committee chair or assignment (this is called bullying or blackmail, if you prefer), it is not difficult to imagine other deprivations for which Dear Leader has a taste.

Charlottesville, thanks to our Dear Leader, has now become just another beleaguered dot on a map, forget Thomas Jefferson et al., another national war zone described by the same Dear Leader who cannot bring himself to call out neo-nazis or even shake a warning finger at the Klan.

We don’t need this! And we sure as hell don’t love a leader who fears the mob at his back!

Enough, Pigpen! Enough!

]]>https://neufeldauthor.wordpress.com/2017/08/13/president-pigpen/feed/0neufeldauthorHAPPY NOW?https://neufeldauthor.wordpress.com/2017/08/11/happy-now/
https://neufeldauthor.wordpress.com/2017/08/11/happy-now/#respondFri, 11 Aug 2017 14:22:44 +0000http://neufeldauthor.wordpress.com/?p=1734Continue reading HAPPY NOW?]]>So, we “let Donald be Donald.” And what did it get us?

We’re not going to tabulate the number of executive orders specifically designed to erase the idea, presence, and effectiveness of President Obama.

Nor are we going to list those liberties and privileges we’re held for 240 years that – thanks to the Donald and his blue ribbon cabinet – seem to be blowin’ in the wind.

Even the energy to oppose, counter, demonstrate against what’s been happening these past seven months has dissipated.

Many of us who voted against Donald decided, one by one it appears, that at least he isn’t Vladimir Putin, an outright dictator. Although he may be an admiring acolyte of Mr. Putin’s, Trump has so far found that to be president is NOT the same thing as being KING. He may not like it, but he seems to be adjusting.

So, “we let Donald be Donald.”

That, alas, seems to have been a mistake.

We cannot have been the only old codger, wrapped in Dickensian night cap and scarf, blankets to his chin, who found sleeping impossible Wednesday night. Even as we told ourselves we were being alarmist, fretting over nothing that could conceivably happen. Realizing that Donald had boxed himself in to action of some kind kept us awake as we actually tried to imagine some way out of the puzzle into which Mr. Trump had ad-libbed us all.

Not having been to Guam did not keep us from imagining the death and destruction of its inhabitants. Or from picturing the horrendous conflagration of Seoul. Which might well have led to list-making: potable water, toilet paper, duct tape, tuna fish, peanut butter, medicines. Remembering the duck-and-cover fifties we found those lists to be unchanged and as reassuring (hah!) as they had been before.

We couldn’t feel quite so optimistic as we had years earlier. SEATO had disappeared; NATO was unlikely to leap into a fray so far from its base. The subcontinent of India is otherwise occupied. Australia is unhappy.

We’re out there all alone. Our military establishment seems to be letting Donald be Donald, and as he “doubles down” it’s clear that the president has neither information, a sense of history, respect for diplomacy. Rather than bombing the —- out of ISIS, we’re going to bomb the —- out of North Korea.

To millions, Donald is THE MAN. Members of Congress have lined up behind him as they usually do in international crises. Criticism of a president stops at the water’s edge, we’ve been told.

It doesn’t make us feel better to acknowledge that the threat to the US is not from the Donald but from North Korea.

So we look around and keep our ears open. The stock market seems largely impervious to what may or may not occur. Businesses and people throughout the country are still making plans, to expand, to vacation. Our infrastructure remains on a list of things “to do.” Our nuclear arsenal has been growing. The “alt-right” is rolling gleefully. The Democrats are nowhere. Women are underpaid. Blacks and Hispanics are still the most honored guests in our prison systems. Drugs are being consumed at record levels. Babies are having babies. Food stamps continue to be worth their weight in gold. Corporations continue to make promises of research and development.

Donald is still being Donald.

What’s changed?

How foolish we feel to be alarmist. To criticize our own Dear Leader seems pointless.

Yet at the back of our minds, in our memories, are days of sunshine and baseball, scholarships, the NIH, intellectual curiosity, brilliant scientific achievements, great books, family reunions. Pride in our armed forces. Helping to feed the world. Helping to heal the world. Helping to educate the world. Electricity, Google, cellphones. Space exploration. Lemonade stands. Voting rights.

Blame us liberals (Democrats, moderate Republicans) who refused to believe that the norms of behavior could possibly include a chief executive like the one we have now, a man so self-enamored that he cannot see (let alone sense) the damage and real harms (in economics, diplomacy, honesty and trust) he is causing around the world.

Blame us for assuming that people in this country would, sooner rather than later, come to their senses and vote for a system of government (regardless of its leader) with which the nation had prospered for 240 years.

Blame us for DOING THIS TWICE: in 2004/5 when George Bush was re-elected, and all Europe muttered “How could they do this again?”

Blame us for lazily assuming common sense would save us all. For allowing a charlatan to busker his wares , marketing them to the neediest, the least sophisticated, the already dumbed-down citizens of 21st century America. For allowing him to present bread and circuses rather than ideas, policy, truth and concern.

Blame us for thinking that our fellow citizens were smarter, more savvy, more on to the incredible.

Blame these benighted survivors of the crash of 2008 for believing that the speeches and hoop-la (and free hats) of this new sort of candidate were toys sent by someone who not only remembered them but who sympathized with them.

Blame them for not realizing this man had no bottom lines, no moral compass – in effect had no love for anyone outside his immediate family and fortune-making machine. Blame them for not realizing that he had neither time nor inclination to help anyone improve his or her life.

Blame them for not understanding that this a was a Prime User. He may shout about needing and demanding loyalty, but his loyalty to those who did vote for him was cast instantly aside when he admitted he could have become king without their help. And he crowed that he certainly didn’t need them now that he already was.

But the primary responsibility for the mess in which we find ourselves today , the day after the repeal and replacement of health care plunged to oblivion, is Mr. Trump’s.

Not that he hasn’t had a lot of help. The pack of enablers in Congress – from McConnell to Ryan to members who weren’t sure which way to go – should they stick around to see what happened, should they sit on their hands and watch dismemberment? Should they keep their heads tucked between their shoulders, hoping not to be noticed by Zeus and his Augean machine?

What seems clearest is that Congress had been persuaded that their first responsibility was to serve the Donald, not the nation, not their constituents or veterans or teachers or the ill. It apparently has little to do with keeping world peace steady. Or the balance of trade more or less even-Steven. Or the health of women, seniors, children.

But WAIT! If you subscribe in the next 30 seconds….!

The skies above are lightening. Out of the West comes a battered bespurred Mountain Man accompanied by two very determined, full-skirted b-girls with brains and guts. Better, they surfaced after a goodly portion of the country (all but 17 percent) began to organize, began no longer to accept what seemed to becoming a norm. The stubborn but unyielding trio- with a few sidekicks from the South – watched and learned from the crowds in the streets shouting “Enough!”

It’s too early to estimate their effect on our nation’s forward progress. But there is it is, anyway: a halt to the King’s narcissism, to his misunderstanding of what the nation means to the world, of what it means to its inhabitants. No one likes to see his home trashed without the promise of repair. And while the Constitution is an indistinct insurance plan, it’s what can be used to pull us all up to normalcy.

We cannot afford to let these few White Hats save the township alone. Unlike the good folk in church in “High Noon,” we cannot let our years of support fade against our attempts to make civilization the norm, not the exception. Cooper’s crowd was afraid. We must not be. We must convince ourselves that the value of our nation- its status, its leadership, its gentle persuasion (sometimes not quite so gentle as all that) – can and should be able to beat the gang from Queens to pulp.

Perhaps in time we’ll be able – one base at a time – to admit we made a collective mistake.

And the nation that can do that has the ability and talent and brainpower to be able to alter an errant narrative, and with a great deal of effort (the next three years) undo all the misery and shenanigans that have been foisted upon it by know-nothings, care-nothings, plan for nothings.

Perhaps because we feel that the United States is tougher and stronger and more blessed than Donald Trump, we find a sneaking and growing sympathy for the man who is currently doing his best to destroy the nation.

Rather than just screaming every week “Enough!”, we awoke recently to an ironic allegory…no, a parallel in fairly recent history of which even he should be aware.

Russia had never been considered by her neighbors, allies, enemies and friends as a nation of first rank. Since the time of Catherine the Great, and even before, Russia herself was aware of this. As a nation, it fought and struggled to make its influence and importance internationally grow to parity with Great Britain, France, and Germany. Behind every battle it fought, behind every war, was the need to expand, the need to dictate, the need to become sophisticated and cultured in the same way her European neighbors were.

The Great Bear, until the nuclear age dawned, was always half a dozen steps behind everyone else in scientific accomplishment, in building an empire, in sitting as an equal at the table of nations.

The last czar of Russia (the very nation Mr. Trump seems to idolize) WAS above the law on his throne. When World War I erupted, Russia went to the barricades against Germany along with his more stable colleagues. But Russia’s war was a disaster.

In desperation, Nicholas decided to make himself Commander in Chief and actually physically mounted his horse to lead his troops on the battlefield. More disasters. He ignored the advice of HIS generals and his diplomats. He was convinced that he alone was favored by God and destined to become a “winner” by virtue of his position, his background, his imagination.

Modern historians are rewriting the influence of the Russian royal family’s “Advisor,” Rasputin, who some say resembled the advisor Mr. Trump now has in Stephen Bannon.

It may be that Rasputin had the Czar’s family’s interests and welfare at heart in providing guidance and direction on how to rule. Although Nicholas felt Rasputin was his wife’s creature, Rasputin was often the last man to whisper in his ear and perhaps more responsible for the Royal Family’s fortunes and deaths than anyone at the time knew.

In this country, now, Trump is near to mounting his own steed and going into battle. This despite the talent and brain-power of his generals and diplomats for good or ill, Republican or Democrat. Without using the words a czar might about value and virtue and strength and purpose, Trump has demonstrated daily that he feels his power is equal to that of an unelected czar. He can neither control his anger nor his pettiness. His daily “tweets” are the equal of a Russian potentate’s ukases. Nothing he says is to be disputed. Truth resides in him alone.

All of which has led us to our current state of disbelief. Shock and awe were supposed to be reserved for our enemies.

Unfortunately, a lot of what we think we know is going on in D.C. is provided by the national press, who rely and report based on contacts, friends, tea-leaves. It cannot depend on recent events or histories – or on unidentified sources who may be astonishingly prescient – because Mr. Trump neither knows about these nor cares for outward signs of civilized behavior such as we are used to. The president’s attitude seems to be – as it is towards the current health care struggle – let the press write what it will, he alone can deny, persuade, convince the country of its opposite. (Let the millions on Medicaid suffer; it’s no skin off his nose.) Confident of his following – and amazingly right to be so – Trump in effect is daring Congress to try to stop him. In his mind, of course, Congress is composed only of Republicans –on whom he should be able to depend – and a few outliers, Democratic stragglers, most of whom seem caught in his headlights, fearful and craven.

As each day dawns and we awake to overnight ravings and threats, as a nation we are inching towards that moment when it seems to be coming clear that Mr. Trump is more dangerous, more unhinged, more trouble than he’s worth. Inadvertently he has done what he set out to do: shake things up in D.C., prove to one and all its corruption and mendacity, promising the world but giving it nothing but Arpege. Plus make a lot of money.

In the process he has assisted the voters of the United States in disbelieving in government, in feeling embattled and threatened. Some say they don’t care about how we are held in international eyes. Some believe they agree with the president about how the US of A has been “taken” by her allies around the world. This idea does not stop our fellow citizens from buying Japanese cars, inexpensive clothing manufactured in Asia, and gorging on delicacies from Trader Joe’s outlets in the far Pacific. Much like Medicare, of whom many are critical until their own is threatened, people want what they want when they want it and that, of course, is just another promise of an historic personality destined it now seems to ride his own horse onto the battlefield and be carried off on his shield.

]]>https://neufeldauthor.wordpress.com/2017/07/21/the-czar/feed/0neufeldauthor“ONLY I…”https://neufeldauthor.wordpress.com/2017/07/19/only-i/
https://neufeldauthor.wordpress.com/2017/07/19/only-i/#respondWed, 19 Jul 2017 18:16:15 +0000http://neufeldauthor.wordpress.com/?p=1723Continue reading “ONLY I…”]]>We seem to recall that on the campaign trail, Donald Trump – in discussing how beautiful his new tax code as going to be – happily revealed that “Only I can fix it,” because, after all, he had been profiting from the old one for years.

In his royal state of mind, Mr. Trump seems now to believe that only he can fix anything: healthcare, tax codes, international agreements, climate change, Medicaid.

It is now clear, or should be, that only he can manage to screw things up. Only he can cause the United States of America to be perceived as confused, weakened, untrustworthy. Only he knows more than his security apparatus, more than all of his cabinet put together on every topic. And only he is responsible for hastening the US of A to a status just barely above that of Rio or Caracas. (It’s only fair to grant him allies in Congress for these purposes.)

The Donald seems to truly believe what we suspected all along: he is King. He wasn’t elected to be a representative and protector of his nation, but its czar. And that is how he expects his subjects to accept him, c.f., James Comey, Jeff Sessions, the entire “Mornin’ Joe” cast, the CIA, the department of State. Whenever he suspects his subjects of disloyalty (or criticism, or Democracy), the Donald goes on tour. He returns triumphantly, renewed, and full of the energy it must take to lie instantaneously about anything and everything.

So far, he has been able to persuade his followers that everything he does is natural, bursting with common sense, and as far from felonies as any six year old.

Stupendously, his following seems to think of him as somehow a victim, someone to be pitied.

We’ve watched him insult allies, belittle foreigners and their leaders, admit that he would rather see hundreds of thousands of Americans suffer rather than have Medicare.

His adoration of Vladimir Putin – and any other “strongman” currently at the head of a government – i.e., the Philippines, China, Venezuela, India – has always seemed suspect, as though he really were a six year old searching for a father to admire and follow.

Many of us have been waiting for the Donald to overstep. He has, of course, many times, but he’s always been agile enough to persuade the nation that other things mattered more than his little slip-ups. His base is forever prepared with excuses: he’s a “newbie,” he doesn’t know Washington, he doesn’t understand the balance of power, he is not a scientist. He’s only been in office for 6 months.

It was one thing to meet with his Russian counterpart privately with only Secretary Tillerson and translators at hand. It was just one more thing to have met with Russian bureaucrats and officials – without an American witness or recorder or even, we suspect, a translator. Temporarily we’ll put the apple farther from the tree than it is and neglect Junior.

It is, however, something else again for him to beard Putin at a dinner, speak with him for nearly an hour WITHOUT an American translator at his side. We believe Mr. Trump does not speak Russian. And we know Mr. Putin prefers not to speak English, lest he be clearly understood.

Apparently, unless the single Russian translator took them, no notes are available re the subjects of discussion. Mr. Trump will tell us he and Vlad just gabbed for a while about everyday concerns and their families.

On the other hand, who knows?

Who knows to what Trump agreed? When? How?

Who knows what Mr. Putin’s goals were, and whether he feels he achieved them.

One thing seems clear: Vlad had his shot. He may never have another one as good and wide open as this was. And the bitter irony of all of this is that Trump still thinks he’s smarter, wiser, more experienced, as well as KING.

We think this kind of charade should stop. Now. We also think that the Republicans in Congress should stop it. For unless we miss our guess, what Mr. Putin picked up at dessert was, in fact, the American Tree of Knowledge. Mr. Trump loves to boast. In his own mind, there is no difference between himself and his nation. There couldn’t be. He’s the King.

We thought seriously about this. But then we remembered that the other half of our weekly endeavors for WHDD.FM included five segments each week called ”Good News,” wherein we found items of general surprise and interest: health concerns, elephants, dogs, happy children, veterans rising above their injuries.

In a moment of madness we thought about combining the two programs: Good News Amid the Bad, something like that. And instantly we knew that the good news would overwhelm the bad, because people really DON’T like hearing bad news all the time. It has already lead us all to Trump fatigue, administration fatigue, Russian fatigue, even if you are part of Trump’s base.

We think Americans believe that nothing that comes from Russia can do us harm (except of course the ultimate bomb). Which is why Mr. Trump’s followers have, nearly to a man or woman, decided to can the Russian talk and to worry about it later. What concerns THEM most, as it should we think, is their health care plan.

We write these columns usually at dawn on Friday the day we record them. We do that in order to provide our listeners and viewers with the latest real or fake news, whatever the case may be. Half the time we don’t know. We may suspect, but we don’t know.

Which pretty well matches up with the rest of the country who may suspect but cannot know what’s real and what’s fake, either. It takes time to sort through the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Politico, Mornin’ Joe, the Washington Post, CNN, Fox News. Few of them know whether what they’re spewing is real or fake, too. Why? Because this administration has made it a habit to lie reflexively, without thinking, automatically. A lot of this is, as they say, “walked back” later. But in the meantime, it consumes cable news and commentators throughout the country. (The most recent example of this is this a.m.’s BREAKING NEWS about a 6th person in the New York interview between Trump, Jr., Manafort, Kushner, the Russian lawyer, a friend of hers, and ???? NBC says it has the name of a man who holds dual citizenship, ours and Russia’s, and that he may have been a KGB operative and double agent for years. But who knows?)

We seem to have reached the bottom of a great hole. One side looks down into it and sees standing water. The other side looks down and sees its glorious reflection.

Which is to say, reality appears no longer to exist. Facts no longer are agreed upon. Standards have gone by the board.

This makes life difficult not only for the press, but for the administration players themselves. Who are THEY to believe? Can they recall what each said the day before? How many and who are recused and from what? Who’s in charge of the defenestration of America’s democracy? Steve Bannon?

While we’d like very much to talk about people in the administration we admire, we have to lift blankets to find them. We had at one time nothing but reverence for the nimble Kellyanne Conway, but she’s now an aparatchik. “The kids” started well before climbing down to their father’s level. Cabinet members we’d thought might actually know something turn out to know nothing but destruction of water, air, consumer affairs, education, the economy, taxes, and international money laundering. The military, as far as we can tell, stands alone and thank heavens for that.

We’ll tell you whom we do admire. Ourselves. Not us personally, but all of America who is putting up with this crap day by day, minute by minute, and not taking its eye off the ball. Whether Trumpies or Democrats, millions have been alerted and energized by not simply the worst kind of politics, but the best kind of public concerns. West Virginia focuses on Medicaid and their families. New England on Medicaid and Planned Parenthood. California on Medicaid and energy. Alabama on Medicaid and voting rights. Appalachia on Medicaid and the teeth and general health of their citizens, and their elderly who need to eat.

Furthermore, to the surprise of nearly everyone, “On Tyranny,” a one hundred twenty page little number by Timothy Snyder has not only become a best-seller, but seems to have replaced “It Can’t Happen Here” as mandatory reading about a dyspeptic and dystopian future. Forewarned may indeed be forearmed.

So, as we watch in dismay as the rudiments of American democracy are watered down daily, it’s tough to find optimism in the air.

What we’re left with, as one concerned citizen among millions of others, are memories: how we all got here, what we did when we arrived, how we built a colossus (and along the way saved the backsides of other colossi), welcomed as Emma Lazarus did, stood for the National Anthem at Comiskey Park, rode our bicycles on sunny afternoons through the countryside shooting at squirrels. We went to school and learned, trained, were hired, built families, cared about right and wrong. That’s the Good News.

To write about our nation on its birthday, and the state of that nation as it is today, right this very minute, made us want to duck the whole thing.

We’re not the oldest citizen in the land. Nonetheless, we have memories, happy ones, of being a people proud, farsighted, daring. A nation willing to take chances to help others as well as ourselves live better lives. Willing to reconstruct battle-zones that eventually became viable and important nations and trade partners.

Reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, whether at twelve in camp, or singing the national anthem at football games – even sometimes way back in the forties and fifties just staring at the test pattern on our first television sets (let alone the thrill of watching the Moon Landing in ’69 in grainy black-and-white) – mixed abstraction with accomplishment and brought proud tears. To be an American meant for so many years to be a GOOD GUY.

Millions before and after us understood. We were trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent. Our motto – Be Prepared – meant something. We made three promises: duty to God and Country; duty to Other People; and duty to self.

We are not naïve enough to believe these wondrous qualities erupted only in the past couple of years. But once they were unleashed at the top of the governmental strata – the only successful evidence that “trickle down” might actually work – the oil slicks at cabinet and Congressional levels did NOT kill all life below. Rather, as we know, the human mechanisms on the bottom swam upwards to meet and mingle with the detritus floating above, in effect covering the continent.

A beautiful woman we know of certain years bought a house a few years ago down south to be closer to her family. Meeting her one recent afternoon at the hardware store, we were not only surprised (and pleased) at her return, but horrified at her reasons. It wasn’t only her own family she couldn’t talk with. It was also that family’s entire cast of supporting characters: friends, in-laws, landowners, hardware store owners down south. She would have been speechless had she not been so angry. Her comprehensible fury would have – had she not fled – turned her into a termagant unwilling to see goodness or reason in any of them.

We had heard, and read, of intra-family breakdowns because of politics. That story goes back more than a hundred and fifty years. That it is alive today – witness monuments guarded, flags raised, idioms rejuvenated – testifies to the witless and nearly psychotic air we breathe and (thanks to the newly empowered EPA) the water we drink, the slag in our streams, the drilling for riches regardless of whatever harm may come to people who live and try to survive despite their crumbling environments.

Insofar as a large part of the structure of our government today is missing in action – not just bureaucratically but in Congress, as well – there are no brakes on any one person’s viciousness. From the top to the middle (that’s as far as this administration wants to go), citizens have been given license to imitate their leaders’ attitudes and language and gestures.

As for the press on which we have depended for as long as the Republic existed, it too has been caught in the maelstrom of incivility, lies, fake news. This alas is what they cover 24 hours each day. This is what they have to cover. And in doing so, too often they’ve been infected with the same viruses. Bruit their honesty and truth-telling as they will, their readers and listeners shrink in their granting of approval and belief. For every ambitious, hungry, untutored talk-show host there now exists an ambitious, hungry, untutored would-be pundit. Face to face these exist, and the noise they make together drowns out what we have long been accustomed to hearing, thinking about, deciding.

Worse than all this – in our mind – is that the puzzlements that now face the average citizen include features never before elevated to such status or recognition or even possibility: treason, for one. And not just incidentally, which most of us all have acceded to over the years, the making of power, the construction of wrap-around power and money. The threat not only of economic debasement but of quote legal action unquote for disagreement and demonstrations of resistance. Ethics as a science and as a practice has nearly disappeared.

Where once we as a nation lead confidently towards peace, understanding, human rights, we now waffle. And that indecision has affected our allies around the world. Their respect and reverence for the US of A has down-sized not only our influence, but also our future value to the rest of the globe. We still – in the persons of dedicated idealists – work beyond endurance to make a difference in health and education and standards of living. (True enough, we are also still selling weaponry at a phenomenal clip.)

What we see before us, in Washington, London, Khartoum, Malaysia, Brazil, is a melting down of American strength, goodness, effectiveness. Our leaders tell us the world is no longer laughing at us. Our leaders know, and have learned and want to learn, nothing.

Which is why the Fourth of July has become so painful.

So what can we do?

This may sound inconsequential but what we have to do is remember who we were, what we were, what we sought and achieved, and work like hell to get back to that Eden before the Fall.

Forget about the Last Tweet. Forget about Michael Flynn. Forget, if you can, about Donald Trump.

Remember who has the ball.

You do.

It’s difficult sitting isolatedly while trying to estimate just how strong opposition to the Trump Health Care plan is. We’re not the most technically savvy blogger in the Union. We haven’t a dozen screens or even a text messenger with which to keep ourselves up-to-date. We don’t have assistants or editors or researchers working at our beck and call.

But this week we watched as olenagenous Mitch and his enabling wife, Elaine Chou, came smashing up against reality. She, for being unable to open her mouth (let alone her eyes), in recognition and defense of women throughout the nation who stand to lose health care, forcing them and their families to stay up nights trying to imagine how they are going to (a) keep those home-fires burning, (b) keep their own parents alive and well either at home or in assisted living centers, (c) keep sending their children to day-care, (d) afford minimal medical care especially in rural areas.

Mitch, who doesn’t appear to have parents alive, or even a memory of them in his heart, for the first time in many years stands diminished in nearly every way. He can’t find 50 votes for his bill in the Senate, although he’s certainly not above buying them with our tax dollars. He and his silent lieutenants, after a run of eight years obstructing American progress, now stand all alone, naked, before their voters. And we voters are not happy.

Trying to rush through Congress an enfeebled health-care outline for action that denudes millions of warm clothing, food, livable wages, healthy drinking water, nonregressive taxes, failing infrastructure – McConnell is revealed finally for what we all along imagined him to be: mean-spirited, devious, secretive, slippery and untruthful.

But from what we see and read, millions of American voters have already scented decay on that Hill and are not about to let its odor poison them further. Sit-ins, stand-ins, marches, emails, advertisements, banners, town hall meetings, letters-to-the-editors, seminars teaching people to recognize the signs of “Tyranny,” and determination to fight it – like the Wave in a stadium – are circling the nation, heading north/south, east and west, having plainly reached a point of exhaustion that is well-beyond frustration and closer to furious confrontation.

The nation has learned to identify legislators of value and probity, as well enablers and treasure-hunters. There are still too few in the former category and too many in the latter.

But in both the House (up for grabs next year) and the Senate (1/3 of whom have to face their constituents in 2018, too), the reality of having to join the army of lobbyists – becoming thereby faceless and unworthy of television interview time, or fall back on their original day jobs as attorneys, doctors, developers – also unworthy of wide public notice – despite the extra loot they may find in “private” enterprise – is unthinkable.

They may have to join the eighty percent of the public who find the new “health care bill” flawed, mean, cobbled together out of a desire to pass something rather than a desire to pass something worthy of a great nation.

“Compromise” is anathema to this crowd, as is bipartisanship. To have to work with members of the opposition on anything is as verboten and frightening a future development as they can imagine. So, in view of the increasingly well-organized and no-longer-to-be ignored electorate – people that daily call or write or text or email their displeasure, who march and wave flags of defiance and resistance – these too-well fed, too-well-insured “representatives” who had earlier bet their farms on Mitch and Donald and Paul (and the ever-silent and extremely cautious Mike), are being forced to “make nice.” Hedging, smiling tremulously, allowing as how the Bill might eventually be improved with the participation of others, these “reps” are desperately attempting moral and mental turn-arounds even though most of these seem exactly what they are: temporary shelters from the storm.

This is called career management.

These next ten days are pivotal. By all means, take the Fourth of July off and spend it with your loved ones. But keep those fires banked for July fifth.

America is on the verge of demonstrating to the world its humanity, its concern for the lowest as well as the highest. There is hope in the air. Use these ten days as 24-hour workshops of democracy. Forget who voted for whom. Concentrate on the health and safety of your neighbors, friends, families.

While we watch the country as a whole break down politically, we are also spectators at the dissolution of common sense at The New York Times. Its left-hand editorial page seems to have no idea what’s on its right hand page.

On Wednesday, Tom Friedman tried to push younger people into the position of becoming gradual saviors of the Constitution. “In the long run the only thing that will save us is if more people – no matter what age, color, gender or faith – build moral authority in their respective realms and then use it to do big, meaningful things. Use it to run for office, start a company, operate a school, lead a movement or build a community organization. And in so doing you can help put the “we” back in “We the people.”

We would call this approach a soft, gradual one with which to fight an organization like the Republican mobsters in the Senate and House. It’s thoughtful, safe, civilized. And of no practical use against an entrenched mafia with no moral suasion of any sort. To fight people who do not believe in America, or in the Constitution, or in the dictates and directions of history – not to mention the every-day manners and mores of a nation that has thrived for more than 200 years on courtesy, debate, respect and concern for others – it is no longer sufficient to cut them slack. To suggest that Mom and Pop, or even their single Harvard graduate son, could effectively combat the collapse of the United States by opening a store, organizing a community, teaching…is for armchair politicos.

We’re facing people who care for nothing. Who have no bottom lines, who read not neither do they reason. Our president is exhibit number One. He cares not for religion, nor economic status of others, nor their health, nor their safety, nor the future of a once great nation, no matter his campaign slogan. What he loves is adoration, unrelenting loyalty and fealty. We have more than once noted how medieval Trump’s vision of his role is. He’s the King and You’re not.

Facing the prospect of a ruinous “health care” bill married to an incredibly slightly more sympathetic House “health care bill,” we see – despite the Times’ opposing editorial – how many of the mafia yearn only to be soldiers, not capos. No Republican (indeed, no member of Congress of either stripe) wants anything more than his colleague next door: safety, stable income, great health insurance, total anonymity in the larger world. Those who might be inclined to clear their throats and raise their hands to suggest an new idea or more sophisticated proposal – i.e., who might actually have a vestigial memory of what our nation once was – go unrecognized, if not unpunished.

The Times wants to rely on, and force into service, a handful of “dependable” moderates: Susan Collins, Shelley Caputo, Rob Portman, Dan Heller, Lisa Murkowski. But you know what? These oft-sighted saviors have more than forty colleagues who should also be able to place people above party, the nation above payoff. Where are they? Actually we know where they are: in line with their cohorts being doled out tiny sops to their consciences by Don Mitch, weenie course corrections that will be able to satisfy individual members’ who with trembling hands sign on the dotted line. Don Mitch is offering protection, and the boys in the back room are likely to accept it.

What has long been apparent and astonishingly clear is that few members of Congress have wives, parents, grandchildren, cousins, close friends who are ill or needy or made helpless by the world in which they try to survive. No children, in-laws, school chums, golf partners who come down with treatment-requiring disease.

The vision of Congressional members is focused as laser-like as the Donald’s. “Me.” “ Mine.” “Money to do this some more.”

Friedman asks beginners to “man up.” The Times asks a few non-representative Senators to do the same. And neither option has a chance in hell of stopping the two Dons, Trump or McConnell.

The US Congress has become Sicilian, or Neapolitan. “Garbage” in the streets becomes common-place. Life is lived beneath the shadow of Russian volcanos, happily more dormant than active. “Assassinations” simply lead to townspeople averting their eyes and stepping over decomposing bodies.

Which explains why Trump’s base is steadfast. It’s not enough to say they don’t understand yet what’s happening. Most of them do. But what options are they given? Other “families” are nearly as corrupt. And if not corrupt, then ideologically bankrupt.

If the base hangs on determinedly, as it seems it is doing, it is out of desperation and misplaced hope. It’s no good trying to explain or to reason with it. One Don has made succor suspicious and seedy. The other has simply put it out of reach.

Is it time to “go to the mattresses?”

Like so many other bystanders, we hope not. What makes today’s forecast so dispiriting is our collective memories of what was once done so successfully. Many of us are part of having made the United States great to begin with, years ago. We had jobs, goals, pride.

To give this up for a dyspeptic existence of division, hate, corruption, and anger is not what Americans want.